In another column we record the lamented death of
yet another martyr to the passive resistance cause. Miss Valliamah Moonsamy, a
young lady not yet in her twenties, was one of those devoted Indian women who
sought imprisonment in protest against a marriage law that dishonored her
parents` marriage and cast a stigma upon her own birth. Her sudden and
unexpected demise, two days after her return home, holds in it all the elements
of tragedy. We mourn the loss of a noble daughter of India who did her simple
duty without question, and who has set an example of womanly fortitude, pride
and virtue that will, we are sure, not be lost upon the Indian community. We
tender to her family our most respectful sympathy.
It is with extreme regret that we announce the
death of Miss Valliamah, the eldest daughter of Mr. R. Moonsamy Moodaliar of
Johannesburg, on the 22nd instant at Johannesburg, after a prolonged illness in
gaol. It appears that she was taken to bed immediately after her conviction, and
also after her release was suffering greatly. The late Miss Valliamah was born
in Johannesburg in 1898 and attended the Government School. She joined the
passive resistance struggle on the 29th October last and proceeded to Newcastle
with a party of ladies. She afterwards rendered assistance at Charlestown,
Dundee, Ladysmith, Dannhauser, Maritzburg, Tongaat and Durban. She eventually
r-crossed the Transvaal border and was convicted, with her mother and others, at
Volksrust on the 22nd of December 1913, to three months` imprisonment with hard
labour and was discharged on the 11th instant in terms of the Provisional
Agreement.
Her father is one of the pioneer Indian settlers
of the Transvaal. He was once in goal as a passive resister and during the last
campaign was very ill and only came out of the hospital where he underwent an
operation recently. We share the sorrows of the parents and express our deepest
sympathy at their irreparable loss.
Letter to the press, July 27, 1918. Published in Bombay Chronicle, July 29, 1918; Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 14, pages 507-08.
Dr. Pranjivan Mehta, who met Gandhiji as a student in London in 1888, became a life-long friend and rendered financial help to Gandhiji until his death in 1932.
Please see also Satyagraha in South Africa, Chapter XXIX, on the role of Sorabje Shapurji Adajania in the struggle in South Africa.
"Reminiscences of Imam Bawazeer; Letters to the inmates of the Ashram, March 7, 14 and 21, 1932. Published in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 49, pages 183-84, 202-03, 217-19. Call to the faithful
Gandhiji closed the Tolstoy Farm in Johannesburg in January 1913 and moved to Phoenix Settlement near Durban with some passive resisters and their children in the school at Tolstoy Farm.
Two baskets or vessels suspended from the ends of a stick carried horizontally over the shoulders
Letter to the press on October 20, 1918, the day when Mr. Cachalia passed away. Published in Bombay Chronicle, October 21, 1918; Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 15, pages 56-57.
William Hosken, member of the Legislative Assembly of the Transvaal and former President of the Association of Chambers of Commerce of South Africa. He was sympathetic to the Indian cause.
Please see also Satyagraha in South Africa, Chapter XVI, on the role of Mr. Cachalia (Kachhalia) in the Satyagraha.
Published in Indian Opinion, January 7, 1914; Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 12, page 321
Letter to the press, August 30, 1919. Published in Young India, September 3, 1919.
General Louis Botha, first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa (1910-1919), died in 1919.
Published in Young India, September 25, 1924; Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 25, pages 210-11.
Published in Indian Opinion, October 22, 1910; Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 10, pages 337-38.
Published in Navjivan, November 30, 1924; Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 25, pages 372-74.
These two items on Miss Valliamah - an editorial and a news item - were published in Indian Opinion, February 25, 1914, under the titles "In Memoriam" and "Untimely Death of a Young Passive Resister". They were reproduced in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 12, page 357.